Soft­ware guide­line be­ing con­sid­ered

China is con­sid­er­ing a fiveyear soft­ware se­cu­rity guide­line to safe­guard State se­crets and data in key in­dus­tries, ac­cord­ing to a se­nior of­fi­cial from the Min­istry of In­dus­try and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy.

The gov­ern­ment will fo­cus on in­creas­ing the safety of soft­ware in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor and ap­pli­ca­tions used by gov­ern­ment de­part­ments and State-owned en­ter­prises this year, said Chen Wei, direc­tor of the soft­ware bureau at the min­istry.

Chen didn’t dis­close de­tails of the pro­posed guide­line.

The move may prove a new hur­dle for over­seas ven­dors as the gov­ern­ment-backed projects tend to buy lo­cal soft­ware due to se­cu­rity con­cerns.

China is one of the largest soft­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers in the world. Chen said the an­nual rev­enue for the in­dus­try is ex­pected to ex­ceed 10 tril­lion yuan ($1.61 tril­lion) by around 2021.